Core Course- 5 Category- III

Semester- II Mark- 05

Question: Historical Sources.

Ans: Historical sources are, at their most basic level, something that tells us about history. It may be a
document, a picture, a sound recording, a book, a cinema film, a television program or an object. Any sort of
artifact from the period in question that conveys information can qualify as a source.

There are two main types of historical sources: Page | 1

• Primary Sources and
• Secondary Sources.

A primary source is something that originates from the past. It could be a chronicle, a piece of pottery
or even a piece of glacial ice that gives us climate data about atmospheric carbon levels a thousand years ago.
Historians, to the best of their ability, work with primary sources to understand the past on its own terms, not
through a modern-day lens. For example, if one only studies the Crusades through modern day books, they will
not understand what would motivate a knight to travel the world and engage in war against Muslims in his own
language. But if we look to a primary source, we can at least better empathize with the medieval world that
would make the act of holy war seem reasonable to him, even if we still strongly disagree with the outcome.

A secondary source is a work that comments on the past. Typically, this is a recently written book that
describes past events, often written by a historian or trained scholar familiar with the time period and civilization
in question. Scholars will spend just as much time with secondary sources as they do with primary sources as
they try to understand how other scholars interpret ambiguous events and may disagree with their analysis.

For example, a Roman coin that was made by the Romans is a primary source, but a drawing of a Roman
coin made in 2003 would be a secondary source. A book written about the Tudors in 1525 would be a primary
source, but a book written about the Tudors in 1995 would be a secondary source.

22 July 2022 11:06:10 PM

Rana Sutradhar